This dissertation examines how Seoul Korean speakers signal and detect the Accentual Phrase (AP), which is the word-sized prosodic group, using pitch and speech timing cues. The focus of the experimental investigation is on how pitch and timing collaborate or compete with each other. All the experimental materials used are phonemically identical strings which contain two APs, and can be phrased in two different ways (e.g. 2+3 or 3+2 syllables).

A series of production and perception experiments demonstrated that, first, the number of syllables within the AP and the type of AP-initial segment systematically determined the pitch movement over the larger prosodic unit (the Intonational Phrase). Second, pitch was foregrounded as a perceptual cue to the AP when pitch and timing competed in experimental stimuli with naturally occurring pitch and temporal variations; however, the contribution of timing was magnified when stimuli had prototypical AP pitch patterns (with a leap at the AP boundary) and an exaggerated timing cue (compensatory lengthening). Although listeners' response patterns suggested evidence of a weak trading relation between the pitch and timing, the application of the trading relation to the perception of the prosodic boundary seems to be problematic. In addition, listeners' expectation of utterance-final lengthening affected their temporal perception.

Accentual Phrasing in Seoul Korean seems to be constrained by general auditory principles, despite its distinctive aspects such as the lack of metrical structure and the close relationship between micro- and macro-melody. The auditory grouping principles based on proximity and similarity may operate cross-linguistically in general, although speakers seem to make language -specific adjustments. The implications of the experimental findings on prosodic typology, shared grouping principles in speech and non-speech sounds, and the linguistic and functional usage of prosody are also discussed.